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Second Call for papers
Extended deadline for abstracts: June, 15, 2009

Artificial by Nature


Philosophy of Life and the Life Sciences
and Helmuth Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology

Invitation and call for papers for the IVth International Plessner Conference,
Erasmus University, Rotterdam

Wed. 16-Fr.18 September, 2009

<http://socgeo.ruhosting.nl/plessner>http://socgeo.ruhosting.nl/plessner

Introduction
Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) is one of the 
founders of twentieth-century philosophical 
anthropology. His book Die Stufen des Organischen 
und der Mensch. Einleitung in die philosophische 
Anthropologie [The Stages of the Organic and Man. 
Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology], 
first published in 1928, inspired several 
generations of philosophers and life scientists. 
Here, ‘life sciences’ is understood in a broad 
sense, as encompassing all those endeavours 
within sciences and humanities in which human 
life and its expressions are investigated from an 
anthropological perspective. This perspective is 
also a typical stream of thought of continental 
European philosophy. Since the sixties the work 
of Helmuth Plessner was also increasingly 
received in the Anglo-Saxon scientific scene (see 
e.g. Grene, 1966, and 1986) even though 
Plessner’s philosophical and sociological works 
only started appearing in English translation in 
the early 1970s (Plessner 1970, Plessner 1999).
At present a renewed interest in (the 
contemporary relevance of) Plessner’s philosophy 
can be witnessed. In part this renewed interest 
is related to a more general revival of 
phenomenology within philosophy and to the 
emergence of phenomenology as an important 
perspective for the life sciences (in the 
aforementioned broad sense), which has resulted, 
for example, in renewed appreciation of 
Merleau-Ponty by philosophers in the Anglo-Saxon 
tradition. But in addition to this development, 
Plessner’s philosophical anthropology turns out 
to have a specific relevance for some of the key 
issues in contemporary research within the life 
sciences and humanities. This ‘Plessner 
Renaissance’ is not only apparent in a growing 
number of publications (Eßbach and Fischer, 2002; 
Ernste, 2002; De Mul, 2003, 2007; Holz, 2003; 
Kockelkoren, 2003; Lindemann, 2004; Gamm, Gutmann 
and Manzei, 2005; Lindemann and Krüger, 2006; 
Mitscherlich, 2007; Oldemeyer, 2007, Coolen, 
2008), but also finds its expression in the 
foundation, in 1999, of the international Helmuth 
Plesser Association[1], in the three 
International Plessner Conferences that have been 
organized until now (Freiburg, 2000; Krakow, 
2003; Florence, 2006), and in the growing number 
of MA- and PhD-theses devoted to various aspects of Plessner’s work.

Main Objective
The IVth. International Plessner Congress, 
entitled ‘Artificial by Nature’, that will be 
organized in cooperation with the Helmuth 
Plessener Gesellschaft, aims at a fundamental 
exploration of the relevance of Plessner’s 
philosophical anthropology for the philosophy of 
(organic and artificial) life and (the philosophy 
of) the life sciences and technologies today. It 
is the aim of the organizers to bring together a 
carefully selected group consisting of both 
philosophers and philosophically oriented life 
scientists (in the aforementioned broad sense) 
into an interdisciplinary discussion, which is 
explicitely not confined to Plessner experts, but 
rather extended to those interested in the 
philosophical issues of life sciences Helmuth 
Plessner has worked on. To facilitate the 
international interdisciplinary exchange English 
will be the conference language and several 
prominent scholars also from the English speaking 
world whose work shows affinity with Plessner’s 
anthropology are invited. The intended congress 
will be, just like the preceding ones, a small 
but fine, in depth, three-day event.

It is no coincidence that this conference takes 
place in the Netherlands. As Plessner lived and 
worked in The Netherlands for almost two decades, 
several of his Dutch students – Jan Sperna 
Weiland, Jan Glastra van Loon (†2001), Lolle 
Nauta (†2006), to mention just a few – played a 
prominent role in the study and application of 
Plessner’s philosophical anthropology. Glastra 
van Loon and Nauta also contributed to the 
present revival of Plessner’s philosophy. The 
Helmuth Plessner Archives are also located in the 
Netherlands. (see also: 
<http://wereldaanboeken.ub.rug.nl/?p=37>wereldaanboeken.ub.rug.nl/?p=37)

In the last decade a new generation of scholars 
that study and apply Plessner’s philosophical 
legacy in their work has entered the 
international stage and have created a bridge 
between the continental and Anglo-Saxon world. In 
the last decade also Merleau-Ponty’s existential 
phenomenology, which relates to Plessner’s 
philosophical anthropology in various ways, has 
received increasing attention amongst 
philosophers and the life scientists in their 
search for a more fruitful alternative for the 
increasingly criticized empiricist-rationalist 
paradigm, and makes it worthwhile to explore the 
relationships between these bodies of thought.

Plessner’s philosophical anthropology
The central question for the congress is whether 
Plessner’s philosophical anthropology is relevant 
for contemporary developments in the philosophy 
of (organic and artificial) life and (the 
philosophy of) the life sciences and technologies 
today, and if so, in what way and to what extent. 
Since the domain covered by this question is 
rather wide, the congress will focus on five 
specific themes. Plessner’s philosophical 
anthropology will provide the conceptual 
framework that will connect the questions under 
examination with regard to the five themes. For 
that reason, before introducing these themes, a 
short introduction to this conceptual framework will be provided.

Plessner, educated as a biologist and 
philosopher, defines life in terms of the notion 
of boundary. In his biophilosophy, he explains 
how the cell becomes animate through its membrane 
within an inanimate environment. Only when a 
living organism takes up a relation to its 
boundary, does it become open (in its own 
characteristic way) to what lies outside and to 
what lies inside[2]. Only then does it allow its 
environment to appear in it, and allow itself to 
appear in its environment. Taking his bearings 
from this biophilosophy in Die Stufen des 
Organischen und der Mensch (1928), Plessner 
establishes the foundation of his philosophical 
anthropology, moving from plants through animals 
to man. He defines human beings as that kind of 
living being that is centrally positioned in its 
direct embodied and unreflected relationship with 
the environment, and, at the same time, as that 
kind of living being that is located outside of 
this boundary and is, thus, open to the 
world­what Plessner calls being eccentrically 
positioned. From such an eccentric position, 
humans must establish artificial boundaries and 
embody them. Because of his eccentric 
positionality, human beings are artificial by 
nature. Plessner verifies the thesis of eccentric 
positionality in the areas of philosophy, 
society, history, politics, language, art and 
music and in the expressivity of the human body (Fischer, 2000).
Helmuth Plessner

Eccentric positionality does not imply the 
reproduction of the classical Cartesian dualism 
with is separation of bodily existence and human 
consciousness. On the contrary, it is an 
essential consequence of Plessner’s theory that 
these are two sides of the same coin. The divide 
between body and mind, so common in modern 
philosophy, has to be overcome, if existence: man 
is his body (as living body) and has his body (as 
physical object). Human life is constituted by 
continuously having to find a settlement with 
respect to these two aspects. The human being is 
both structured as centred and eccentred. This 
view is partly reiterated by Maurice 
Merleau-Ponty , in his Phénoménologie de la 
perception (1945) . In this book human existence 
is explained in terms of man being a 
‘body-subject’ which in all its movements and 
expressions is attuned to its world, or, using an 
expression by Merleau-Ponty himself (1945, p. 
117), man can only have a directedness to the 
world insofar as his body exists towards the 
tasks and opportunities in the world in which he lives.
Against the background of the eccentric 
positionality and the accompanying 
‘dual-aspectivity’ of man, Plessner formulates 
three constitutive anthropological laws:
1)  the law of natural artificiality, indicating 
that man being has to create his own life in 
order to compensate for the natural place he has 
lost. Man is ‘artificial by nature’. Unlike 
animals and plants man’s existence is beyond the 
centric condition of the animal. As a result, he 
is homeless, he has no natural place in the 
world. The constitutive lack of equilibrium of 
the human positionality is the driving force of 
all culture. Because it belongs to man’s nature 
to be artificial with respect to nature, which 
implies that he depends on supplements such as 
language, houses, institutions, science, and 
technologies for his survival, man always has 
been a cyborg (cf. Clark, 2003, De Mul, 2003);
2)  the law of mediated immediacy, according to 
which the relation between human eccentric beings 
and their environment is actively mediated by the 
human corporeality, enabling them to objectify 
(and subjectify) themselves and the environment; 
to create a distance to himself and to the 
environment. Our cognitive consciousness of 
objects in the world presents an illusion of 
unmediated, direct and objective perception of 
the objects as we forget the mediating role of 
our senses. The mediatedness of this relation to 
the environment can be revealed through 
reflection from the eccentric position. But the 
bordered body is not just an interface but also a 
face, an instrument of human expressivity. Human 
being and human life are essentially and 
necessarily (inter-)active, and again mediated 
expressions of one-self, of one’s identity as a 
human-being. These expressive actions are bound 
to the media in which they are realised and 
through which they are communicated. The 
subjective intention is biased by the 
intersubjective media and obtains a meaning and 
creates a sense, which is not in line with its 
original intentionality any more. Or in 
action-theoretic or post-structuralist terms: its 
effect becomes an unintended and unpredictable 
consequence and a potential playing ball for the 
power of discourse. Therefore human beings never 
know what they are doing and will only learn what 
they have done through history. In Plessner’s 
view this does not mean, however, that they are 
disempowered by this fact. Rather, the notion of 
this contingency will initiate new actions, 
linking former ones to future ones and as such 
create an ever-continuing search for sense;
3)  finally, the law of utopian standpoint, which 
points to our eccentric positionality, from where 
we are at a distance to our own physical 
existence and to our passive experience in a 
world of praxis. Because of his eccentric 
positionality every human being experiences his 
or her ‘constitutive rootlessness’, which impels 
him or her to transcend the achieved and thus to 
keep searching for the unreachable ‘home’, a 
position of unambiguous fixation, a place in this 
world and a clear identity for the self and the 
world around it. The eccentric positionality 
leads to a positioning in a counterfactual 
utopian home, a kind of counterfactual 
‘non-place’. From there we experience the traces 
of the ‘other’ excluded from our own factual 
being, doing and saying. This detachment, which 
is constitutive of personhood is also the power 
of putting oneself in the place of any other 
person, indeed of any other living thing. Where 
there is one person, Plessner says, there is 
every person. The specific particular being, in 
one’s own limited, parochial situation, is a 
concretion, as every particular human being is, 
of this utopian generality providing a firm basis 
for the sociality of human actions in general.

Five conference themes
Against this framework of Plessner’s 
philosophical anthropology, the conference will 
focus on the following five related, and partly 
overlapping themes, each of which is connected 
with different philosophical sub-disciplines and different life sciences.

1. Evolution and human life (philosophical anthropology, philosophy of biology)
Although the biophilosophy that Plessner offers 
in Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch 
should be understood as a typology of the 
different fundamental modes in which living 
beings maintain themselves as relatively 
self-sustaining organisms in their environments 
(i.e. as plant, animal and man), rather than as a 
theory on the evolution of life, nevertheless 
many parallels can be drawn between his 
philosophy of the organic and Darwinism. From 
this perspective one could address the question 
in which way the relation between Homo sapiens’s 
nature and that of (other) animals should be 
understood, and especially the question what the 
philosophical scope is of the thesis that man has 
emerged from animals in an evolutionary sense. 
There are also several interesting connections 
between his biophilosophy, the cultural sciences 
and technology studies. Also, his basic 
anthropological law of ‘natural artificiality’ 
provides us with an interesting perspective on 
the controversial topic whether natural selection 
in the evolution of hominids is indeed gradually 
being replaced by artificial selection, i.e. one 
in which technological and cultural developments dominate.
The key questions within this thematic domain 
are: What are the implications of the notion of 
eccentric positionality for the study of the 
special position of Homo sapiens amongst other 
living beings? How does the notion of ‘natural 
artificiality’ affect the standard Darwinian view 
of evolution, with respect to both animals and 
humans? And finally, perhaps the most intriguing 
question of all: what, actually, is life?

2. Embodied cognition (philosophy of mind, 
philosophy of cognitive sciences and neuroscience)
For some time, now, it has become impossible to 
imagine present day debates on skills and 
cognition, viz. as they are taking place within 
the philosophy of mind, without recurrent 
references taking place to Merleau-Ponty’s 
account of human corporeal intentionality in his 
Phénoménologie de la perception (1945). But In 
Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (1928) 
Plessner had already developed a sophisticated 
critique of Cartesian dualism, which has not yet 
been incorporated in these debates. However, his 
philosophical anthropology may very well turn out 
to be highly relevant in this context. Of course, 
in his critique Plessner rejects the opposition 
between body and mind as a fruitful starting 
point for explaining human behaviour altogether: 
for him a human being has to be understood as a 
psychophysical unity. A human being’s life is 
constituted by its continuously having to find a 
settlement with respect to the relation between 
being one’s living body [Leib] and having one’s body as a body thing [Körper].
The key questions to be addressed in this domain 
are: To which extent does Plessner’s 
philosophical anthropology, which systematically 
takes into account the findings of the empirical 
scientific research of human action and animal 
behaviour, find confirmation in the empirical 
findings of current cognitive and neurological 
sciences? What are the similarities and 
differences between Merleau-Ponty’s later 
existential-phenomenological approach of human 
beings and Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, 
which itself had already incorporated many 
insights from phenomenology? What can be said 
about the role of embodied cognition in current 
theories on human knowledge, skills, action and 
expression, which are developed by the cognitive 
and neurological sciences, based on the perspectives of these two philosophers?

3. Bio-ethics (medical anthropology, ethics, medical science)
Although Plessner, as a philosopher who tried to 
uncover the fundamental principles of (human) 
life, he did not develop an elaborate ethical 
theory, his philosophy of life and his 
philosophical anthropology do have far-reaching 
implications for questions concerning the 
normative and ethical aspects of human life. The 
three anthropological laws disclose man’s 
finitude. Because human life is characterized by 
mediated immediacy, even in those cases that one 
would know what is good or healthy for one’s 
life, there always remains a gap between the goal 
that one is pursuing and the end point one is 
actually realizing. One has to learn from the 
history of one’s pursuits. As humans are 
artificial by nature, any naturalistic account of 
what is good or healthy for someone will 
necessarily fail. Plessner’s view that man’s 
standpoint with respect to transcendence is 
necessarily utopian, entails, that humans, in any 
situation that demands an answer of a normative 
kind, can never have resort to a given, last or absolute, set of values.
The key questions within this thematic domain 
are: If one takes man’s eccentric positionality 
into account, which import does this have for an 
understanding of human freedom? And what are the 
implications for the notion of health, in both 
physical and mental respect, although, of course, 
they are intertwined? How can humans, given the 
law of utopian standpoint, find and defend 
legitimate justifications for the morality of 
their actions? How is human morality tied up with 
man’s finitude and historicity, as understood in 
Plessner’s anthropology of eccentric positionality?

4. Living culture (philosophy of culture, aesthetics, cultural sciences)
Since humans are artificial by nature, culture 
and art are not supplements, but integral 
elements of human life. At present, the 
disciplines which study art and culture seem to 
oscillate between two poles: the 
existential-phenomenological and hermeneutical 
approaches in which the human ‘subject’ is 
understood in terms of self-clarification and 
self-interpretation, and the post-structural and 
constructivist approaches in which the ‘subject’ 
seems to disappear behind a variety of material 
and discursive structures. Plessner seems to 
propose a more balanced view by stressing the 
eccentric positionality of human existence, which 
on the one hand entails that human beings are 
confined and restricted to their current 
environmental structures and material 
realisation, while on the other hand human 
experience remains inherently contingent and 
undetermined, as a consequence of which humans 
live in a world of choice and sociality. Culture 
can thus be seen as the result of materialisation 
and embodiment, but also of choices in a field of 
mediated realisations. Thus, human activity, as 
well as human identity, is characterised by its 
situation-, institution- and medium-bound 
narrative and performative structure. This 
perspective also blends the distinction between 
culture and nature and conceives human actions as 
(eccentrical) ‘networks’. These ideas are 
confirmed by modern actor-network and non-representational theory.
The key questions in this thematic domain are: 
How is Plessner’s concept of eccentric 
positionality to be the basis of human sociality? 
How do human actions and practices deal with the 
different kinds of positionality, which according 
to Helmuth Plessner are so crucial for human 
being(s)? What would Helmuth Plessner’s 
contribution to the social scientific debate on 
the relationship between structure and agency 
look like? What is the relationship of 
non-representational social theory and Helmuth 
Plessners multi-facetted concept of 
positionality? How does the restrictiveness of 
the embodied nature of human being create a 
fundamental drive towards overcoming these 
restrictions and a longing for a more anonymous, 
undetermined, cosmopolitan, world of flows and 
generality (a world of non-places) and a longing 
for unrestricted recognition and trust? How would 
Helmuth Plessner conceptualize the mediality of 
(post-)modern human being as an expression of life?

5. Beyond man: protheses, cyborgs and artificial 
life (philosophy of technology, AI and AL, robotics)
The notion that human beings are ‘artificial by 
nature’ is also relevant for those sciences that 
study the restoration, normalisation, 
reconfiguration, enhancement or even replacement 
of (aspects of) human life by technical means, 
such as protheses, artifical organs, cyborgs and 
artifical life forms. How should we evaluate 
these sciences from the perspective of Plessner’s 
philosophical anthropology? Although the law of 
natural artificiality does not provide any 
reasons to repudiate these technological 
developments as unnatural, the laws of mediated 
immediacy and of utopian standpoint warns us for 
being too optimistic about both the 
controllability of these developments and about 
their contribution to human happiness.
Key questions in this thematic domain are: To 
what extent can the figure of the cyborg be seen 
as a further exploration of man’s eccentric 
positionality? Can the basic law of natural 
artificiality provide us with a framework to 
understand contemporary movements like 
transhumanism? And do they, in turn, place 
Plessner’s philosophical anthropology in a new 
light? I.e., is a kind of positionality that lies 
beyond eccentric positionality conceivable, and 
if so, how will it affect the cognitive, 
volitional and emotional capacities of mankind?

Discussion list for those who are interested in the work of Helmuth Plessner
If you would like to subscribe to the Helmuth 
Plessner discussion list please go to: 
<https://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/plessner.html>https://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/plessner.html
To be able to send a message to the list 
(<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]) 
one first needs to subscribe to the list.

Tentative programme
The conference will consist of five plenary 
sessions, each of which will be devoted to one of 
the five themes. In each session four papers will 
be presented, leaving a substantial amount of 
time for discussion. In addition to the plenary 
sessions a series of parallel sessions and a 
series of master classes will be organized, in 
which other scholars or PhD/master students, 
respectively, will present their research or work 
in progress (related to one of the five 
conference themes). Each parallel session or 
master class is chaired and supervised by one or 
more invited speakers. Besides the invited 
speakers up to 125 other scholars and PhD/master 
students can attend the conference.

Wednesday September 16, 2009
08.30-12.30 Session 1: Evolution and human life

13.30-17.30 Session 2: Embodied cognition

18:30 Conference dinner at the Restaurant Bazar (down town Rotterdam)

Thursday September 17, 2009
08.30-12.30 Session 3: Bio-ethics

13.30-17.30 Parallel sessions and Masterclasses
Three to six Parallel sessions with other 
scholars or Master classes with PhD/Master 
students with each four presentations

Public lecture (time and theme to be announced)

Friday September 18, 2009
08.30-12.30 Session 4: Living culture

13.30-17.30 Session 5: Beyond man: protheses, cyborgs and artificial life

The following key-note speakers have already been confirmed:
Prof. Dr. Jay Bernstein (Edinburgh, UK)
Prof. Dr. Zdzislaw Krasnodebski (Bremen, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Thiemo Breyer (Freiburg, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Krüger (Potsdam, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Taylor Carman (New York, USA)
Prof. Dr. Gesa Lindemann (Oldenburg, Germany)
Dr. Maarten Coolen (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Lenny Moss (Exeter, UK)
Prof. Dr. Raymond Corbey (Leiden and Tilburg, Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Jos de Mul (Rotterdam, Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Marcus Düwell (Utrecht, Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Karl-Siegbert Rehberg (Dresden, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Huib Ernste (Nijmegen, Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Soeffner (Germany)
Dr. Joachim Fischer (Dresden, Germany)
PD Dr. Dierk Spreen (Paderborn, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Christian Illies (Bamberg, Germany)
Prof. Dr. Peter-Paul Verbeek (Enschede, Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Petran Kockelkoren (Enschede, Netherlands)
Prof. Dr. Cao Weidong (Beijing, China)

Public lecture
The scientific organization committee seeks to 
invite one or two participants of the congress to 
give a public lecture for a wider audience on Thursday evening.

Venue
The conference will take place at the conference 
centre of the Erasmus University: see also: 
<http://www.eur.nl/english/facilities/erasmus_expo_and_congress_centre/>www.eur.nl/english/facilities/erasmus_expo_and_congress_centre/

Hotel accommodation
The invited speakers will be hosted at the Hotel 
Bazar. Hotel Bazar is probably one of the most 
unusual hotels in Rotterdam. With just 27 rooms 
decorated in oriental, African and South American 
style, and situated above the celebrated 
Wereldeethuis Bazar, where also the conference 
dinner will take place, the hotel has an intimate 
atmosphere. Its central position and unique 
character make Hotel Bazar the perfect choice. 
Each room in Hotel Bazar has its own bathroom 
with shower and/or bath, colour television and 
mini bar. All our top floor rooms have a wide 
balcony with a view over the bustling Witte de 
Withstraat. The varied breakfast is served to you 
at your table in Wereldeethuis Bazar 
(‘wereldeethuis’ means ‘world restaurant’) and 
includes a thousand-holes pancake with honey, and 
delicious Turkish yoghurt with fresh fruit. 
Breakfast is available all day long! Single room 
from EUR 60. Double/twin room from EUR 75 to EUR 
125. All prices include breakfast and VAT.

Other participants will have to make their own 
reservations. Close by several other hotels are 
available, which are mentioned on the website of 
this conference: 
<http://socgeo.ruhosting.nl/plessner>http://socgeo.ruhosting.nl/plessner

Second Call for papers
If you would like to participate and present a 
paper at one of the parallel sessions/master 
classes, please send an abstract of about 500 
words to 
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask], 
before June, 15, 2009. Please also mention your 
preference for one of the themes of the 
conferences. The conference language will be English.

Conference fee
PhD/master students                         € 50.­   per person*
Senior participants                           € 100.­   per person*
* including conference dinner
To be paid in advance before August 15, 2009 to 
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Faculty of Philosophy
ABN AMRO accountno: 42.90.57.555
IBAN: NL27ABNA0429057555
BIC: ABNANL2A
Please mention: 6070000000/Plessner Conference

Proceedings
A selection of contributions will be published in 
an edited volume edited by the scientific 
organization committee, possibly complemented 
with one or two members of the Board of 
Scientific Advice. The Proceedings will be 
published as Volume 3 of International Yearbook 
of Philosophical Anthropology (Akademie Verlag in 
Berlijn, 2010, see also: 
<http://www.akademie-verlag.de/olb/de/1.c.325876.de>www.akademie-verlag.de/olb/de/1.c.325876.de). 
Further contributions can be submitted to: 
‘[mensch] Internationale Zeitschrift für 
philosophische Anthropologie / International 
Journal for Philosophical Anthropology’ (see 
also: 
<http://www.tu-dresden.de/phfis/mensch/mensch_start%20e.html>www.tu-dresden.de/phfis/mensch/mensch_start%20e.html) 
. So there are ample scientific publication outlets available.

Organization committee
- Dr. T.M.T. Coolen, Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam
- Prof. Dr. H. Ernste, Department of Human 
Geography, Radboud University Nijmegen
- Prof. Dr. H.-P. Krüger, Department of Philosophy, University Potsdam
- Prof. Dr. J. de Mul, Department of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Dr. Jan Gulmans, Enschede

The scientific organization committee is 
supported by a Board of Scientific Advice:
- Prof. Dr. B. Accarino (Florence, Italy)
- Prof. Dr. Cao Weidong (Bejing, China)
- Prof. Dr. W. Eßbach (Freiburg, Germany)
- Dr. J. Fischer (Dresden, Germany)
- PD Dr. H. Kämpf (Darmstadt, Germany)
- Prof. Dr. Z. Krasnodebski (Bremen, Germany)
- Prof. Dr. G. Lindemann (Oldenburg, Germany)
- Prof. Dr. Walter Sprondel (Tübingen, Germany)

Preceding congresses organized in cooperation 
with the Helmuth Plessner Association:
I.       International Helmuth Plessner Congress: 
Helmuth Plessner - Exzentrische Positionalität 
[Helmuth Plessner – Eccentric Positionality] 
University of Freiburg, Germany, 2000.
II.      International Plessner Congress: 
Philosophical Anthropology, Politics and Society, 
University of Krakow, Poland, 2003.
III.    International Plessner Congress: 
Expressivität und Stil [Expressivity and Style] 
University of Florence, Italy, 2006

Literature
Asiain, M. Sinn Als Ausdruck Des Lebendigen: 
Medialität Des Subjekts--Richard Hönigswald, 
Maurice Merleau-Ponty und Helmuth Plessner. 
Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006.
Bröckling, U. Disziplinen des Lebens: Zwischen 
Anthropologie, Literatur und Politik. Literatur 
und Anthropologie, Bd. 20. Tübingen: Narr, 2004.
Cao, W. (eds.). Questions (Chinese) Vol. 3, no.4: 
Special Issue on Helmuth Plessner. With 
Contributions of Cao Weidong, Chen Yajuan, 
Joachim Fischer, Andrew Wallace, Yan Bin, Zhang Fang." (2006).
Clark, A. Natural-Born Cyborgs : Minds, 
Technologies, and the Future of Human 
Intelligence. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Coolen, T.M.T. "Becoming a Cyborg as One of the 
Ends of Disembodied Man." In Proceedings of the 
2001 Conference on Computer Ethics, Philosophical 
Enquiries: It & the Body, edited by R. Chadwick, 
L. Introna and A. Marturano, 49-60. Lancaster: 
Lancaster University Press, 2001.
Coolen, T.M.T. “Being and Place; Experiencing 
Positionality”, Expressivität und Stil, Helmuth 
Plessners Sinnes- und Ausdrucksphilosophie, Bruno 
Accarino & Matthias Schloßberger (ed.), 
Internationales Jahrbuch für Philosophische 
Anthropologie/International Yearbook for 
Philosophical Anthropology, I, 2008, p. 151-165.
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[1]           www.helmuth-plessner.de
[2]           More recently we find a similar 
view expressed by cognitive biologists Varela and 
Maturana (1987, 1991) and sociologist Niklas 
Luhmann (Luhmann, 1990), who speak in this 
context of emergent autopoetic systems.

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Human Geography
University of Nijmegen
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